Tallulah

There comes a point about two-thirds of the way through “Tallulah” wherein a character begins asking some sensible questions, only to be cut off and scolded by another character. The film, which is the first for director Sian Heder, is not bad, It has, in fact, two or three excellent scenes, mostly courtesy of Allison Janney (who gets my vote for the world’s finest actor).

Ellen Page stars as Tallulah, a scrappy kid who lives out of a van with her boyfriend (Evan Jonigkeit). Page, who is tiny, is an actor whose intensity and instincts nonetheless stand tall. Page plays Tallulah, who kidnaps a baby from a farcically inept mother, as a young woman who projects strength and sass, a sort of unwashed enfant terrible, but who is dying on the inside. Tallulah’s zeal for stealing and scamming always seems just about to give way to anguished sobbing.

After Dino (the boyfriend) skips out on Tallulah, she finds her way to New York City and the doorstep of Dino’s mother, Margo (Janney), who summarily shuts the door in Lu’s face. After a plot contrivance, Lu returns, this time with the stolen baby, which she presents to Margo as her granddaughter, gaining both of them admittance. The film takes its time setting this premise up because it’s also arranging a series of plot dominoes it plans to knock down later.

“Tallulah,” like its characters, wears its emotions, and its thematic interests, on its sleeve. Characters state outright what ought be left implicit. Yet Heder, who also wrote the screenplay, has a knack for casting, arranging actors like Page, Zachary Quinto, and Uzo Aduba in small but poignant roles. Watching “Tallulah,” one wishes those roles were a bit more reasonable — characters we know to be smart reliably behave in dopey ways. A short chase scene through a subway station, like the film’s premise, relies on Margo, whom we know to be an intelligent and deep-thinking woman, behaving like a gullible moron.

With its budget of six-million dollars, “Tallulah” is an average-quality indie that could’ve been a disaster with lesser actors. Page and Janney take average dialogue and turn it into gold. The film is worth watching for these performances, particularly Janney, who transforms a simple scene of a pet turtle dying into a clinic for actors everywhere.

“Tallulah” — TWO STARS

Directed by Sian Heder. Rated R. Route One Entertainment, Ocean Blue Entertainment, Netflix. 111 min.

The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos’ new movie, “The Lobster,” which stars Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, lands squarely in the “The Tree of Life” category — in that one’s response to it will be shaped by the extent to which one approves of the story’s theme and ethos. It is a work that takes a deeply cynical view toward modern relationships, complete with uniform fatalism and oedipal gesturing by the characters.

Farrell, who has always been a phlegmatic leading man anyway, stars as David, a newly single middle-aged man whose wife has just left him for another man. In Lanthimos’ dystopian world, all single people are immediately shuttled to a swank seaside hotel. If they do not fall in love and find another mate in forty-five days, they’ll be transformed into the animal of their choice. I’ve always appreciated absurdist pieces in which the characters speak the most outlandish lines with poised equanimity. (“Have you chosen an animal?” the hotel manager (Olivia Colman) asks David. “A lobster is an excellent choice,” she declares stoically, as if he’d just chosen one off of the specials menu.) Although this conceit gets pushed too far — the characters are not proper characters, and their rare moments of emotion spring forth as surprising as if they’d emanated from robots — Lanthimos has a talent for deadpan dialogue.

Hotel life is endlessly weird, as guests are expected to socialize in hopes of pairing up. This leads to occasional dollops of comedy that are well laid. Hotel maids, for example, rub their behinds into the crotches of male guests as casually as they fluff pillows. (“This will help your psychological well being immensely as you search for a mate.”) Lanthimos is eager to drive home that this hotel is a freak show, with certain shots and camera angles directly referencing the corridors and inhabitants of The Overlook Hotel.

The awkwardness of it all, the humanity of it all, the shaming tactics on the part of those expecting the singles to pair up — it’s all Lanthimos’ takedown of our societal expectations regarding relationships. Guests are made to feel broken, their foibles constantly pointed out to them. John C. Reilly plays a character whose “defining characteristic” is his lisp; Ben Whishaw’s character is defined by his limp.

Ferrell’s David is nearsighted — “shortsighted” as they say — a metaphor Lanthimos makes sure you won’t miss. The heavy-handedness here tends to define the film’s approach. Nearly every element is pushed just a bit too far. But Lanthimos submerges the tone beneath a flood of no-tone-at-all intentionality. Funny moments don’t land as moments, as high points, and tragic moments don’t effect the viewer viscerally. These moments just sort of float past politely as if squeezing by us in a narrow hallway. The film is neither fast nor slow. Most of the time it seems to have no pulse at all. (As opposed to Spike Jonze’s “Her,” a picture that many will compare to “The Lobster.” “Her” has zeal for its own existence. It seems to enjoy itself in ways that are altogether foreign to Lanthimos.)

Eventually Rachel Weisz emerges as a character credited as “Shortsighted Woman.” Weisz is one of the “loners,” feral singles who, led by Lea Seydoux, live in the woods and are ritualistically hunted with tranquilizer darts by the hotel occupants. Each kill of a loner gets you another day. A series of predictable plot undulations leads to David and Shortsighted Woman forming an affectionate relationship. Were they equipped with functioning personalities, we might understand why one person would fall for another. Myopia isn’t really enough. But Lanthimos stirs the stoicism sauce too thick, making everyone a zombie. I’m sure there’s a “That’s the whole point” counter-argument here, but it doesn’t have to be the point. Lanthimos can launch the same critique, the same central story, with characters who have uniqueness besides limps and lisps.

Sporadic moments of sly strangeness and well-setup comedy save “The Lobster” from being a bad film. We see, for example, a dog accompanying David for the first few minutes of the film until we learn “That’s my brother. He was here two years ago. He didn’t make it.” Also Colin Farrell kicks a little girl. There are, additionally, a couple of nicely complex scenes, including a musical interlude/makeout session, that show how crafty a filmmaker Lanthimos can be. The film’s final scene is compelling, strange, and beautifully ambiguous, yet feels unearned.

“The Lobster” — TWO STARS

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Rated R. Film4, Element Pictures. 118 min.

Knight of Cups

In “Knight of Cups,” Terry Malick’s cinematic vision is yet again one of whispered voiceovers and disconnected images. In their obsessiveness, these sounds and pictures seem to skirt the point in endless circumlocution like a dog sniffing around fallen leftovers before deciding whether or not to dig in.

“Knight of Cups” centers on Rick (Christian Bale), a Hollywood screenwriter who womanizes more than he writes scenes. The movie wanders through Rick’s serial relationships with gorgeous women — Natalie Portman, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Isabel Lucas — who at times differ from each other in dress more than personality.

They are all wistful daydreams to Rick, who is simultaneously plagued by the fraught relationships he has with his brother (Wes Bentley) and father (Brian Dennehy).

Take away the sublime cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki, a man who can make a blade of grass grazed by a breeze seem like aurora borealis, and “Knight of Cups” is barely of film at all. Malick’s genius is that even when he’s not telling us much he’s showing us everything. The man still has the best eye of any living filmmaker. (You can watch “Days of Heaven” with the sound off and not miss a thing.)

Malick’s collaborations with Lubezki are never uninteresting. We get the point of “Knight of Cups” within the first fifteen minutes — Rick is an unhappy, womanizing screenwriter with literal daddy issues — and even still we’re constantly being mesmerized by what Lubezki finds. A dog, underwater, trying to seize a tennis ball in its mouth comes off like a celestial force trying to swallow Saturn. Or Blanchett’s face gets shot in an almost profile that reveals more emotion than it would were we looking at her straight on.

One wonders if Malick just writes the thinnest stories possible just so he can watch Lubezki go nuts.

Malick’s last two films, “To the Wonder” and now “Knight of Cups,” work almost as musical variations on a theme. Malick, who is undeniably a genius, is ever repeating himself. Even a brief appearance by the late Peter Matthiessen (whom Lubezki photographs from the side and below, as if sneaking up on the Lincoln Monument) lends vicarious profundity more than substance to the proceedings.

Malick’s recent films are reminiscent of a Catholic praying the rosary, the serial incantations of “Hail Mary” and “Our Father” merely being spoken in a slightly different tone of voice each time. In “Knight of Cups,” the characters whisper to us in soft voiceover, over and over again, about the disappointments of love, its fleeting and perplexing nature, how pain in the inevitable consequence of intimacy.

How different is this from the much lauded “The Tree of Life”? “The Tree of Life” told a bigger, better story with exquisitely rendered, memorable characters, several being young boys. In substance, however, there’s little to distinguish these last few films from Malick. He is ever looking around at the world, then looking to the heavens, then looking back at the world with the heavens in mind. After a while, one’s neck begins to get sore.

“Knight of Cups” — TWO STARS

Directed by Terrence Malick. Rated R. Broad Green Pictures, Studio Canal. 118 min.

The Witch

“The Witch” exists along some vector of genre at which “Barry Lyndon,” “The Exorcist,” “The Crucible,” and “The Blair Witch Project” intersect. One of the darlings of the 2015 Sundance festival, the film, directed by Robert Eggers, is one that bears the earmarks of its influences and precursors while still feeling fresh and alive.

What Eggers has done in “The Witch” is cut against the grain of the contemporary scary movie. Like “The Shining,” a film Eggers considered as a touchstone for his own, “The Witch” understands that a truly creepy, disturbing film relies not on jump scares and blood splatter but on foreboding, a sense that something will happen or is happening all around us, though we may not see it.

Eggers’ screenplay begins in a tribunal of sorts. A 17th century Puritan man (Ralph Ineson) is being banished from town for some (likely) arcane theological difference of opinion. William claims he preaches the true word of God. His interlocutors disagree. William, his wife (Kate Dickie) are banished. Less than two minutes into the film and we have all the information we going to need about this family. They’d rather fend for themselves out in the woods than abide any insult to their religious integrity.

Living along the edge of the forest, William, Katherine, and their five children barely survive. They pass the same piece of bread around at dinner. Their corn doesn’t grow. William isn’t much of a hunter. (As Ralphie was warned in “A Christmas Story,” William nearly puts his eye out with that thing.) Even their goats seem unimpressed. Then, in a scene that relies on plain old simplicity of editing to be horrifying, the youngest child, Samuel, simply disappears when a game of peek-a-boo goes sideways.

As we watch Katherine alternately cry and pray, and witness Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) ask his father whether or not Samuel is in heaven, we realize that living in the forest in the 17th century is exactly as brutal as one would assume.

“The Witch” contains a truly special performance by Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays Thomasin, the eldest child. Taylor-Joy is 19 playing about 14 or 15. The poise and confidence of this performance is remarkable. Thomasin is accused by her siblings — a pair of fraternal twins (“The Shining” again) who themselves enjoy playing with a goat named “Black Phillip” — of being a witch and therefore causing the disappearance of their infant brother.

After some anguish, the traumatized patriarch and matriarch find reason to believe these allegations. What happens next are the predictable overreactions and recriminations that flow forth from those whose brains have been pickled in religion for too long.

As a director, Eggers has a wonderful feel for camera movement that doesn’t upstage what his actors are doing. Clever framing and imagery abound but don’t register as clever or staged. The film’s steady pacing often slows too much, usually dwelling on dialogue too long. The diction of the film is downright Shakespearean. Multiplex audiences looking for a blood and guts scary movie will fidget in their seats as the actors hurl “thees” and thous” at one another. “The Witch” is an art house film that has been marketed, unwisely, as a straight horror film.

Indeed there is a witch in the film, but she isn’t the scary part. Here, demons and angels are all part of the same hypocrisy, as Michael Corleone would say. Eggers mines this whence-then-is-evil territory without caring too much about it, which is a relief. Ultimately, Thomasin’s graduation into a grown-ass woman who wants to eat from the tree of knowledge and attain liberation and identity feels novel for a horror film. The ending of “The Witch” delivers on what so many horror films are afraid to — a sense of the ecstasy of evil, presented without judgment.

“The Witch” — THREE STARS

Directed by Robert Eggers. Rated R. A24. 92 min.

Nightcrawler

It is rare for a first film to be as masterful as “Nightcrawler,” the new Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle directed by Dan Gilroy. The film, which was also produced by Gyllenhaal, examines the ethical minefield of modern newsgathering without preaching about it. It is, in the end, just a damn good thriller.

Gyllenhaal, in one of his finest turns, stars as Lou Bloom, a petty thief stealing bikes and wristwatches to get by in contemporary Los Angeles. Lou is the kind of enigmatic, seemingly morally nihilistic main character the French New Wave would have loved — a loner whose efforts to connect with others and with his society are stymied by the twisted methods of interaction he chooses. When Lou discovers there’s money to be made supplying local news stations with footage of bloody tragedies, the sick puppy feels he’s found his proper pack.

Lou, who cannot be any older than 30 as he’s portrayed in the film, is a product of the Internet age, with all its anonymity and moral murkiness. An apparent autodidact, he simply repeats Oprah-style aphorisms and faux business major wisdom. Lou lectures his “employee” (Riz Ahmed) on the importance of clear communication in any enterprise, not because Lou understands this to be so but because he’s understood that others understand this to be so. Like Travis Bickle before him, Lou adheres to his sick principles not because he’s high-minded but because, well, it’s what sociopaths do. They stick to their guns.

From the start, Lou ignores any notion of moral or ethical lines between videographer and subject. With the help of a police scanner and a speedy Dodge Challenger, he shows up at the scene of an accident and gets his lens right up in the face of a motorist attempting to phone 911. He enters, without permission, the home of a family whose house has been shot up. All of which is fine with Nina (Rene Russo), the local stations news director who buys the ethically questionable footage from Lou.

The coldhearted Nina unwittingly becomes both Lou’s muse and his mentor. Russo and Gyllenhaal exhibit a kind of chemistry that is both disturbing and delicious to watch. It is not a sexual chemistry but a psychotic bonding over the adrenaline both characters get from getting it first and putting it on T.V. first. We see this adrenaline play out in the careless way cable news broadcasts unverified information during a “developing” story, or the way they’ll speak to a supposed “expert” analyst over the phone only to get Baba Booeyied by said expert. Nina and Lou embody the impulses that lead to such embarrassments.

Which, again, is not to say that “Nightcrawler” is a polemic. It’s effectiveness flows entirely  from its thriller aspects. Gilroy’s ending is inevitable. We always knew Lou would go that far, but seeing him actually do it is more spectacle than surprise.

If the absurd distinction between a “film” and a “movie” means anything to you, then “Nightcrawler” is absolutely a movie, and a good one. But its lead performance is worthy of the film distinction. Gyllenhaal is perfectly in tune with Gilroy’s script. In Gyllenhaal’s hands, we know exactly who Lou is, yet he always seems on the verge of doing something surprising. Gyllenhaal creates a sociopath so smooth that we almost root for his recovery even while being fascinated by his depravity.

“Nightcrawler” — FOUR STARS

Directed by Dan Gilroy. Rated R. Bold Films, Open Road Films. 117 min.

The Double

In “The Double,” director Richard Ayoade hones in on the dark humor of Dostoyevsky’s novella without fussing about its humanism.

Jesse Eisenberg stars as Simon, a workaday government bureaucrat who toils in an office that looks as if Terry Gilliam and David Fincher collaborated as interior decorators. Ayoade, who co-wrote the screenplay, spends much of the first reel establishing basic facts. Simon is timid, abused by his colleagues and bosses who see him as a nobody, and in love with a co-worker named Hannah (Mia Wasikowska). This not-so-economical setup is presented in surrealistic ways that mask the self-conscious solemnity of it all.

The doppelganger story shuffles along to its inciting incident, where we meet James. James looks exactly like Simon, but no one seems to notice. Apart from looks, James is Simon’s opposite — savvy with women, popular at work, assertive with the diner’s bitchy waitress (Cathy Moriarty). Freighted with a shopworn premise, Ayoade leans on flashy filmmaking and spooky music (by Andrew Hewitt) as stand-ins for emotional nuance.

The impressive look of the film, which was photographed by Erik Wilson to make every scene look like an outtake from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, is more compelling than its protagonist. Lynchian influences run thick throughout “The Double.” Were he more adventurous, Simon might resemble Jeffrey Beaumont.

Although the supporting performers act in Lynchian ways (think the espresso scene in “Mulholland Dr.”), Eisenberg and Wasikowska find ways to paint with a fine brush. Eisenberg, an actor of deep intelligence, does deft character work with what he’s given, and Wasikowska squeezes as much complexity as she can out of yet another thinly written loopy-love-interest character.

Dostoevsky, of course, was more interested in the societal implications of bifurcated identity than in the dream-logic psychology of the What does it mean to be an individual? trope explored in “The Double.”

Such societal aspects, though present in the film, get brushed aside. We see glimpses, for example, of the dystopian society in which our tale takes place, a freaky combination of totalitarianism and corporatism. These glimpses end up being background, grace notes on the way to the inevitable showdown between the doppelgangers.

Ayoade makes some fresh moves within the familiar doppelganger story mold. But the film buckles beneath its load of stylistic influences. “The Double” doles out some of the year’s sweetest eye candy but in the end can’t decide whether it wants to be “Eraserhead” or “Face/Off.”

“The Double” — TWO STARS

Directed by Richard Ayoade. Rated R. British Film Institute, Alcove Entertainment, Attercop Productions. 93 min.

Only Lovers Left Alive

For those who enjoyed last year’s “Frances Ha” but were chagrined by its lack of vampires comes “Only Lovers Left Alive,” Jim Jarmusch’s latest experiment in style.

Tom Hiddleston, in a Tommy Wiseau-style wig, and Tilda Swinton star as relative newlyweds (married in 1868) Adam and Eve. Theirs is a love story of two vampires struggling to nourish themselves, both physically and existentially, in contemporary life.

In a film that’s not exactly powered forward by its plot, the charisma of both actors can barely keep the staid story-line afloat.

Being undead, Adam and Eve have seen generations of “zombies” (what they call humans) come and go. When you live that long, you have time to learn languages, develop speed-reading ability, and a develop a general perspicacity. (Distressed by the shoddy zombie-made power grid, Adam powers his house with a homemade generator.) If such creatures did exist, indeed they would be more bored than anything. Point, Jarmusch.

Likewise, it’s well-played that they’d rather score blood through non-violent channels than draw eyeballs by killing zombies to feed. Their friends throughout the years have included Shelley, Byron, and Christopher Marlowe (played by John Hurt). Marlowe is also a vampire and, by the way, ghost-wrote Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Obviously Jarmusch has good fun with the genre.

Adam is a reclusive and brilliant musician, whose industrial rock songs incorporate sounds of bygone epochs. Eve is his devoted and less melancholic wife. It seems like a solid marriage. But so what?

Hiddleston and Swinton each seem poised to snap off a great performance, but the film suffocates them with too much air. Jarmusch is content to gawk at these fascinating specimens. We watch them score their blood — Adam from a hospital lab, Eve from Marlowe — and we watch them lament of the state of the world. The entire film is an Act One stasis.

Of course, this sort of non-traditional story approach is Jarmusch’s bag. And indeed, it is often delicious to watch these characters simply behave. (The comparison to “Frances Ha” was not totally in jest.) In this case, however, that approach doesn’t land.

What Adam and Eve need is a good old-fashioned plot complication.

We nearly get one in the form of Eve’s sister, Eva (Mia Wasikowska), who pops in for a visit. As soon as she causes a problem, though, the couple simply doles out some tough love and clean up the mess without much trouble. The incident was slightly embarrassing. That’s all. Our heroes are never really imperiled.

The story roads this could have gone down are endless and exciting. Adam and Eve would have made a great couple of detectives, for example.

Jarmusch, though, opts for a character study that’s too studious. Adam and Eve are basically couch potatoes. Jarmusch is so taken with the production design of Adam’s chic house that the film seems almost annoyed to leave the place for other environs, where nothing much happens anyway.

“Only Lovers Left Alive” — TWO STARS

Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Rated R. Recorded Picture Company, Pandora Film Produktion, Snow Wolf Produktion. 123 min. 

Hateship, Loveship

Hang out with theater folk long enough and you’ll hear the old maxim, “Comedy is harder than drama.” Well, some things are even harder than comedy — like trying to pull off a dramatic performance when you’re known as a comedian.

Kristen Wiig gives it the old college try in “Hateship, Loveship.” Wiig plays Johanna, an uptight domestic caretaker who gets hired by Mr. McCauley (Nick Nolte) to look after his household and teenage granddaughter (Hailee Steinfeld). Johanna also meets Ken (Guy Pearce), Sabitha’s hunky, ne’er-do-well father.

Johanna is an absurdly somber character. (Imagine Dorothy Gale but without the youthful curiosity and zeal to follow her dreams.) Director Liza Johnson isn’t making a comedy here. Thus the Wiig pendulum gets swung too far in the other direction. She’s not here to be funny; she’s here to be dramatic, the film seems to insist.

Alas, there’s a difference between dramatic acting and lifeless acting. Wiig is so great a comedian, so adept at making us laugh with the slightest wiggle of an eyebrow, that she overcompensates for those instincts and clams up completely. Perhaps it was decided that such rigidness would be “right for the character.” But it’s caked on to the point that there is no character.

Based on an Alice Munro short story, “Hateship, Loveship” sports a juicy plot. Sabitha and her snot-nosed friend Edith (Sami Gayle) are just plain cruel. They fabricate correspondence between Johanna and Ken. Soon Johanna thinks bad-boy Ken is in love with her.

This sort of story usually doesn’t work on me. Credit to Wiig and Pearce for bringing pathos to predictable story beats. Likewise, Sami Gayle and Hailee Steinfeld are effective as moronic kids who can’t perceive the gravity of their actions through the haze of adolescence. (If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that teenagers are assholes.)

The film is rife with shopworn tropes and let’s-pad-this-out-a-bit subplots. Supporting characters, such as a kid named Stevie (Joel K. Berger), the local bank teller (Christine Lahti), and Ken’s druggie girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh), are basically superfluous.

Yet there was enough snap to screenwriter Mark Poirier’s dialogue to keep me awake. “Hateship Loveship” won’t change anyone’s life, but at least it doesn’t totally waste our time.

“Hateship Loveship” — TWO STARS

Directed by Liza Johnson. Rated R. Film Community and Benaroya Pictures. 104 min.

Under the Skin

Jonathan Glazer fielded questions after a recent screening. “We just dropped Scarlett [Johansson] into Scotland and filmed her,” he said.

Glazer’s third film, the brilliant “Under the Skin,” is a fresh variation on the old Mars-needs-women story. Johansson is outstanding as an alien in disguise who lures men into her van for otherworldly purposes. In addition to actors playing scripted scenes, Glazer filmed Johansson’s real-life interactions with random Scotsmen, who rarely recognized the star. Small GoPro HD cameras were installed inside the van.

The result is a singular achievement of hard sci-fi. Glazer, who previously directed “Sexy Beast” and “Birth,” contrasts the rainy hills of contemporary Scotland with the psychedelic, dreamlike environs of the alien’s lair. Both a sci-fi and a horror film, “Under the Skin” eschews the usual tropes.

Even the way the film is shot refuses to reach for the Hollywood cookie cutter. In a harrowing scene that takes place on a rocky beach, imperiled characters fighting furious waves are shot at a distance, with Kubrickian detachment. A Jason Bourne film would shoot this with constant shaky-cam silliness and quick-cut editing. Glazer demonstrates how there’s nothing scarier than a camera sitting dead-still on a tripod.

The beach scene is one of no fewer than three scenes that are so disturbing and well directed they feel made by an advanced alien race. Glazer balances the stunning visual effects work with the needs of his slowly unfurling story. The visuals are spectacular without ever becoming mere spectacle.

The inspired direction succeeds on the back of Johannson. This is her best performance to date. Though only 29, she’s been a movie star a long time. Here Johansson demonstrates new depth and, for the first time, the poise of a veteran screen star who knows what powers her face carries even when expressionless.

What separates “Under the Skin” from, say, the “Species” franchise is an air of mystery. Michel Faber’s source novel answers some of the questions left hanging by the film. Why is this alien doing this? What’s her backstory? What does she think about?

Glazer says such answers were not as interesting as the questions. Moreover, I would say, the dangling questions make for a better story in the hands of a good director. In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kubrick doesn’t bother to explain things Arthur C. Clarke made explicit in the novel. Nothing makes the mind reel faster than imagining what the answers might be.

Thus this film opens itself to endless interpretation. It’s the old “what does it mean to be human” story. It’s a statement on feminism. On the objectification of celebrities. On the banality of human existence. On the allure of human existence. Zizek will have a field day.

“Under the Skin” asks us to consider questions without insisting upon answers. It’s also genuinely disturbing and fascinating along the way. Thus it stands tall next to the bulk of Hollywood genre pictures, which have long been pickled in their own vacuousness.

“Under the Skin” — FOUR STARS

Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Rated R. Studio Canal. 108 min.